An adequate enclosure for an adult savanna monitor will end up costing between $500 and $1000. It will take up as much floor space as a large sofa or dinner table. Savannas need a deep substrate for burrowing, this will involve haling about half a ton to a ton of dirt into the enclosure. If you end up with unsuitable dirt (not all dirt is the same) you will need to haul all that dirt out and naul in more (hopefully better) dirt all over again. The water dish for an adult monitor will be large, I use cat litter pans or concrete mixing troughs. This will be heavy and changing a big heavy sloshing pan of water stinky with monitor feces is quite a chore. All this is a lot of work for a 12 year old child.



On top of this, savanna monitors tend to do poorly in captivity. They seem to thrive at first, and then keel over dead at three to four years of age from various problems with their internal organs (wild savannas can live a decade or more). Also, the books on keeping savanna monitors that are sold at pet stores all suck. Keep them like the authors of those books recommend and your lizard will languish and slowly die, never getting the chance to really be the monitor it was meant to be. The only good book is "Savanna monitors: the truth about Varanus exanthematicus" by Bennett and Thakoordyal, but you have to order this from specialty stores.



Myself, I would recommend starting with a leopard gecko. These stay conveniently small, are docile, and are hardy and easy to care for. Bearded dragons get larger and require more work (with regards to lighting, heat, and food), but are also hardy and docile. A bearded dragon would be a second choice if leopard geckos are impossible for you to find (unlikely, you can order quality leopard geckos directly from the breeder over the internet these days although shipping may be a problem this time of year depending on where you live).



Good luck,



Luke

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